US helping Pakistan reducing line losses

HYDERABAD: US Consul General Karachi, Michael Dodman has said that through USAID’s 5-year Power Distribution Program, US was working jointly with government-owned power distribution companies in Pakistan to improve their performance, both in terms of reduction in losses and improvement in revenues and customer services.

This, he said while speaking on the occasion of inauguration ceremony of the Power Distribution Center (PDC) at Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) here on Thursday.

“Power Distribution Centers have been set up in all nine distribution companies at a cost of US $230 millions in the country and those centers would provide real-time access to electricity load data to managers of Pakistan’s Electricity grid”, he said.

Besides this, the load data improvement program will enable HESCO to monitor the flow of power on their 76 grid stations, he said.

This would also help HESCO overcome unscheduled load-shedding, said Michael Dodman while addressing the inauguration ceremony.

Through this program and many programs, US is providing assistance to Pakistan for reforming the power sector for ending the current energy short-fall in the country, US Consul General said.

Replying to a question, he said that protests against drone would not affect relations between Pakistan and US. Chief Executive Office HESCO, Laique Ahmed Khan said that the program of establishing PDC would enable them to control the grid stations and load-shedding in the areas.

Besides this, it would help us to identify the load on each grid because a main meter was installed at each grid station, he said.

“If any grid station is not working or close due to any reason, through this control system, we will be able to know in seconds not hours as earlier”, he said.

This would also help us to reduce unscheduled load-shedding, line losses and theft also and also help to improve system of HESCO, he said.

Different programs of US including training of staff and enhancing the capacity of other staff caused an increase in efficiency of HESCO by 70 per cent, HESCO Chief said.

Earlier, briefing over the Power Distribution Control (PDC), In-charge PDC, Raham Ali Otho said that through this control system, there would be not load-shedding because they would be monitoring all things happening at grid stations.